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8 Episodes 2013 - 2013
Episode 1
42 mins
It's 1915 and young Leslie "Squizzy" Taylor has had enough of grafting a living picking pockets. He might be a shorty but he has big ideas and an even bigger ego - which only swells when he pulls off a daring heist from a city jewellers in broad daylight with his Bourke Street Rats inner circle of "Snowy" Cutmore, Angus Murray, "Tankbuster" McDonald and his best girl, prostitute Dolly Grey. Even if big crim about town and fence Henry Stokes doesn't give Squizzy quite the price he thinks his loot is worth, Squizzy's taken his first step into a bigger, brighter, riskier world. But what's the use of being a criminal genius if no-one, including the police, rates you? While a more circumspect crook might rejoice in anonymity, Squizzy's ego compels him to prove himself and he throws his gang into a much more challenging crime. They're going to rob the bank manager of one of the new branches springing up on the city's semi-rural outskirts. Only trouble is, it's a fair hike and none of them can drive. Squizzy books a taxi under an assumed name, blithely assuming he will be able to "convince" the driver to play along with his plan. But it all goes wrong and the resolute young driver ends up with Snowy's bullet in his head. Squizzy's not too worried - the cops are jokes. But one cop isn't laughing - Detective Piggott is conscientious and committed and finds an eyewitness among the orchardists and dairy farmers who describe a very short man and another with a Panama hat - Squizzy and Snowy are at the races, drinking a toast to Tankbuster who's joined up to fight the Hun, when in swoop coppers - Leslie Taylor, you are under arrest for murder. It seems Squizzy's circuit of Fortune's Wheel is destined to be very rapid indeed.
Episode 2
40 mins
Facing a murder charge, Squizzy's out on bail, thanks to a few quid slipped to the Bail Justice. He tracks down the Crown witness convincing him that his eyesight is unreliable. Detective Piggott can only watch in dismay as Squizzy is acquitted, but he resolves that one day hell bring down the cocky little so-and-so. Angus approaches Squizzy about a quick job to produce some urgent cash but Squizzy is under constant police surveillance now and needs to lie low to wait out the heat. With pressing expenses, Angus pulls a solo bank robbery and gets away with 400 pounds. Sadly he is caught shortly afterwards and sentenced to fifteen years in the roughest prison in Melbourne. Meanwhile, Squizzy has a new plan - another jewellery store robbery, but this time with the added bonus of giving the cops a small peace offering. Of course it does mean setting up the 2IC of Long Harry Slater's Narrows Gang as fall guy but that's a sacrifice Squizzy's prepared to make. The elaborate scheme unfolds according to plan except that the cops leave their run a little late and fence Henry Stokes is arrested along with Slater's man and charged with major theft. Squizzy admits he miscalculated and attempts to set things to rights by bribing the trial jury, resulting in a surprising acquittal. However Long Harry is deeply suspicious that Squizzy and Stokes have pocketed the lion's share of the takings and has both men severely bashed. Slater declares that his end of town is off limits to Squizzy and his gang. Snowy comes back from fencing the bulk of the jewellery robbery takings in Sydney to a city divided, and Dolly too, is distressed by the animosity - she loves her Leslie but his crazy plans have led folk practically to war. She takes herself over to Long Harry's Narrows Gang hang-out to talk some sense into them all, taking in a bit of Dutch courage as she goes, but Long Harry and his boys send Dolly back to Squizzy scorned, humiliated and brutally raped.
Episode 3
42 mins
Meanwhile, Squizzy's roaming eyes land on the young and wholesome waitress Lorna Kelly. Neglecting Dolly, and motivated partly by a desire for respectability, he sets about wooing the girl. Tankbuster takes up the cudgels on Dolly's behalf and gets himself shot in the process. Dolly confronts Lorna, telling her the truth about Squizzy's nefarious gangster activities. Naïve Lorna doesn't believe her and reveals that she's pregnant with his child. Dolly knows she has lost the man she loves. It's now that thieves fall out and the dangerous and erratic Snowy Cutmore turns on Squizzy. However, Snowy's attempt to revenge himself on his former mate is foiled by Dolly and some cast iron cookware. Squizzy issues instructions for Tankbuster to execute Snowy but Tank doesn't haven't the stomach for the job and banishes Cutmore to Sydney instead.
Episode 4
43 mins
Henry Stokes returns from Tasmania unexpectedly, furious at how Squizzy has run his businesses into the ground. Squizzy throws a lavish party for him to heal the rift, but shortly afterwards Stokes is arrested for possession of stolen property - fur coats gifted from Squizzy! However the little general brazenly intimidates a judge and Stokes get off the charge. Chastened, Squizzy takes to the racetrack, wondering if an honest career isn't the best policy after all. Yet old habits die hard; the moment he sees a punter with a fat wallet, he falls back to his old trade and nicks it - problem is, he is caught red-handed by hard-headed Detective Brophy. Brophy locks him away in the watchhouse to cool off but while he's locked away, baby June takes ill with the flu and quickly succumbs. Squizzy is devastated by the loss of his beautiful little girl. In his fury and grief he torches a police car.
Episode 5
42 mins
Needing time to regroup, Squizzy finds himself drawn back to the arms of safe, dependable Lorna. Maybe she is the stabiliser he needs. Maybe they can make a fresh start. Maybe they can have another child? But after a night with Lorna, Squizzy realises he was wrong. Being with his wife stifles him. It is only Ida who allows him to breathe! However, Ida's inexperience in criminal matters lands both herself and Tankbuster in gaol, which inevitably threatens her lover Squizzy's freedom.
Episode 6
44 mins
The police regularly raid Squizzy's Caulfield House, upturning Lorna's life, looking for something, anything that will lead them to Squizzy Taylor. Detective Bruce befriends the pregnant Lorna and tries to convince her to turn her husband in. She may be devastated by Squizzy's disappearance and the fact he's taken a lover, but she is a loyal wife no less and won't budge. Ida's loyalty reconfirmed, the police's case in disarray and with a film to be made, Squizzy decides to turn himself in, convinced he can beat any court case. In classic Squizzy style, he arrives at police headquarters at a time of his own choosing, on his own terms, with a contingent of press to witness the event. And as he predicts he is immediately bailed yet again. But he discovers there's a price to fame when a former admirer turned stalker guns him down in the street. Although Squizzy survives, the film does not - the government censor bans it in the public interest for its unsavoury association with such a notorious criminal as Mr. L. 'Squizzy' Taylor.
Episode 7
44 mins
Squizzy arranges the breakout of his good mate Angus Murray from prison in an attempt to reunite the Bourke Street Rats inner-circle of three, Squizzy, Tankbuster and Murray. The team, however, will never be as it was. Murray has done the last five years in Pentridge tough, he's a broken man by the time he gets out, his only ambition being to leave town to start a quiet life afresh, somewhere far, far away. But Squizzy has gone to considerable trouble and expense to free Murray and isn't about to let him go so easily. Murray owes him, right? One last job - a straight forward bank robbery - Meanwhile, Lorna gives birth to Squizzy's second child, another daughter, Lesley. Tankbuster delivers the news but Squizzy doesn't want to know. The bank robbery is a disaster. The bank manager is shot and mortally wounded. Murray is arrested, while the triggerman, a brutal ex-con called Richard Buckley, escapes capture. Squizzy's old tricks of threatening witnesses and jury tampering fail for once and Murray is inevitably found guilty and sentenced to hang. Tankbuster pushes for an attempt to break Murray out of prison a second time but it ends badly and Angus' fate is sealed. When Squizzy won't face the condemned man in prison, Tankbuster sees him for what he is - a hollow, emotional fraud and coward. The bond between these two old friends is broken the day Angus Murray swings.
Episode 8
45 mins
Convicted of harbouring the executed murderer and bank robber Angus Murray, Squizzy is sent to gaol where he is confronted by his enemies, the Narrows Gang's Whiting brothers. His punishment at their calloused hands is brutal and soul destroying. Meanwhile, surviving on her own, Ida gives birth to their baby girl, Gloria, and the young mother begins to grow-up fast. When Squizzy is released, his health compromised, he again flirts with the idea of going straight and opens a men's barber shop, and he and Ida, who's loyally waited for him, set up house in a room above Dolly's brothel. But a leopard finds it difficult to change its spots and it isn't long before Squizzy strikes a deal to sell cocaine in partnership with former foe Long Harry Slater. Once again, Squizzy dreams of re-establishing his criminal eminence. A turn of fate leads the former Governor of Victoria's wife, Lady Stanley, to Squizzy. She encourages him to turn his entrepreneurial mind away from crime. She allows him to see what he could be and for one glimmering moment he looks to an altogether different future. But Squizzy's die is cast, and he discovers he has more enemies outside gaol than in. A plot is hatched to kill him and on a cold day in October, 1927, in a humble cottage in Carlton, he dies in a gunfight. So who was it that fired the fatal shots? Snowy Cutmore returned from Sydney? Snowys vengeful mother? Long Harry Slater? Henry Stokes? Long Harry and Stokes acting in concert? A hired gunman from Sydney acting on yet another party's orders? Or a bent cop with a grudge to settle? The truth may never be known, but one thing is for sure; Squizzy Taylor was the architect of his own downfall.